Harare ‘can’t pay public servants on fixed dates’

Pretoria - Zimbabwe’s public servants should not expect to be paid on fixed dates, according to deputy labour minister Tongai Muzenda.

The country was too broke to be able to pay public servants on the same day each month and payslips would have no payment date, he said. “As a nation we are doing our best to try to raise money for the civil servants,” Muzenda said in The Senate.

“The new payslips… there are no dates. It is not an omission, it’s just saying we are going to pay them in the due month.

“We do not want to make false promises as the (Civil Service) Commission does not put the dates on the payslips and that is going to be the case for some time until our economy has stabilised.”

Since Zanu-PF returned to power last year, public servants’ pay dates have changed each month. Some teachers say they are always the last to be paid.

More than 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s revenue is spent on public service salaries with almost nothing left over for capital projects.

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa is in China looking for financial help from Beijing. He estimates Zimbabwe urgently needs loans of about $10 billion (R100bn) to repair the economy and fix infrastructure. - Independent Foreign Service